Last Updated on March 27, 2024 by EarthTechy Staff
Blogging is a perfect online marketing tool that works for the recognition of your brand and keeps the target audience interested. Blogs serve multiple purposes at once: they attract traffic to your website, engage the occasional visitors, and eventually improve brand visibility and sales. With the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, more and more businesses rely on blogging to market their products and services.
Every effective blog should be helpful and relevant. For example, a professional online resume writing service provider resumeperk.com has a company blog where writers share professional tips. They share the best advice on resume writing, job search, and interview tips, and review the services offered. Such resume writer tips help professionals advance in their careers and work for brand recognition.
At the same time, blogging is a turbulent sphere where the rules of the game change frequently. To make sure your blogging and content marketing efforts bring the desired results, check out the next year’s trends as listed below.
The Key Trends and Predictions 2022 in Blogging:
1. Long-form content will be on the rise
Whereas short-form posts (under 500 words) are perfectly reasonable for news, entertaining posts, and updates, leading marketers such as Neil Patel stress the importance of so-called long reads. These are blog articles of 1,800 words and above. Such length is perfect for educational articles, how-to’s, instructions, and analytical articles.
Such articles generate more organic traffic and backlinks. They attract readers who are genuinely interested in the matter and stay relevant for a longer time than the short brief posts. And finally, publishing well-researched, in-depth articles helps you establish a reputation in the industry and earn the credibility of prospects.
2. Content creation is more driven by data
Using data and analytical tools in blogging has become more common. In particular, this includes understanding your buyer persona and writing for them specifically.
A buyer persona is a set of characteristics about your target audience: their location, age, education, interests, and personality traits. Keeping this persona in mind helps develop more relevant content types and topics that will surely resonate with the target buyers.
Also, successful companies and bloggers rely heavily on analytical tools and metrics. The most popular blog analytics include Google Analytics, SEMrush, and HubSpot Marketing Hub. Analytical tools help evaluate the effectiveness of your blogging strategy and adjust where necessary.
3. Content goes increasingly visual
This trend has developed over the years and continues to gain popularity. Intersecting text articles with images and video content will help you cater to the needs of different audiences and retain those visitors who are reluctant or too busy to read.
Visual content helps convert as well: 52% of customers said watching product videos made them more confident in buying decisions.
You can use pictures to illustrate the step-by-step process, give examples, or entertain. Limit the use of stock photos that add no value or extra information to the post. If used correctly and are helpful and engaging for the readers, visual posts increase time on the page. Moreover, attractive posts with videos or infographics typically receive more social shares.
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4. Interactive media is essential for visitors’ engagement
Interactive elements are considered visual content as well, but the difference between them is they engage users and encourage them to take certain actions. These elements include polls and quizzes, interactive calculators, online tours, timelines, and product catalogs. Not only do they offer an interesting experience to visitors, but also increase their stay on the website.
Again, combining different types of content won’t let the visitors of your company blog get bored. Make sure that the interactive elements you offer are within the subject range of your blog. If you are a bookstore or offer book exchange service, the quiz “What 20th-century writer are you?” is reasonable. But if you offer construction services, the quiz “Which Kardashian are you?” will only raise eyebrows.
5. Relevance matters more than ever
As we’ve mentioned above, it’s important to adjust the selection of topics and content types for your buyer persona. Thus, you’ll make the blog content more effective and helpful specifically for your target audience and potential clientele. Yet, relevance also means anticipating what’s important for your clients right now and offering relevant posts timely. If most of your readers switch to remote work, it’s a good idea to provide content related to this new reality.
You may also cover the recent news (provided that they are connected with your industry or target audience) by writing a post on the topic everyone is talking about. Such a post can go viral. On the other hand, it’s equally important to develop ‘evergreen’ content on topics that will remain actual for a long time.
6. SEO is essential to get better search engine positions
Modern SEO has nothing to do with keyword-staffing and “black hat” tactics. Yet, optimization of website usability and content is still crucial to help the blog rank higher in search results.
Firstly, the experts insist that blogging should be regular and consistent, as more articles mean more traffic to the website. Secondly, it’s important to use keywords naturally in meta tags, titles, and throughout the article.
It’s also important to optimize the website in general. Websites with good usability, a convenient design, and easy navigation reduce the bounce rate and improve an overall SEO. As mobile views continue to grow, the website must be optimized for mobile and loads quickly.
The data shows that over 1/3 of mobile users will immediately go to another website if they don’t find what they’re looking for. Make sure the mobile version works as fast and smooth as the desktop one.
7. Guest posts help expand audience reach
SEO is essential, but a tried-and-true method of publishing a guest post in other blogs will also remain on the rise in 2022. In a guest article for another popular blog, you can share expertise and interest an audience that could never have heard of you otherwise. This way of online promotion can result in better brand recognition and better relationships with other brands or bloggers.
The goal of the guest article is to bring value, not to promote your brand or services. It’s best to come up with a relevant topic for the audience of the blog you intend to write for. In addition to guest blogging, you can feature on podcasts, roundup posts, or other content forms where sharing your expertise can bring your brand more recognition.
